DocScan Review – Simple Scanning On The Go
By App Type: Uncategorized
Our rating: 
By: IFUNPLAY
Version #: 1.1
Date Released: 2011-08-19
Developer:
Price: 0.00
User Rating:
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If after a meeting you find yourself in need of something to capture the meeting details written either on a whiteboard or on your own notebook, you may simply use the scanning device of the whiteboard (if it has one) or scan the relevant pages of your notebook using a flatbed scanner. But what if neither the whiteboard scanner nor a flatbed scanner are available? It’s a cliché but it’s true, there’s an app for that.
With DocScan you may now turn to your handy iPhone and take pictures of the whiteboard and/or the pages of your notebook and create post-processed documents from these pictures. Upon producing an image of, say, the whiteboard, the app "auto-detects" the four corners of the whiteboard (probably by examining the image contrast), which you can adjust in the likely situation that the auto-detection fails in pinpointing the actual boundaries of it. When the proper locations of the four corners have been set, you may now start "scanning," after which a new image of the whiteboard is produced eliminating perspective distortion on the writings on the whiteboard but not, inevitably, on other objects (e.g. erasers, markers) that may be lying around in the image.
Other processing options include width/height aspect ratio adjustment, rotation by 90-degree increments, and image brightness toggle. You can save your scanned image as a new document within the app, as an additional page to an existing document (Note: You may only have up to two pages in a document in the free version. In-app purchase of $1.99 if you require more pages.), or as an image in your iPhone’s photo library. Documents can be viewed within the app itself, but they can also be emailed and exported to other apps, including iBooks and Dropbox, as PDFs or zipped JPEGs.
DocScan is of course not limited to whiteboards and notebooks. With this app you can also scan receipts, coupons, bills, and even highway billboards. Anything that is flat and has four corners will do.
Quick Take
Value:Medium
Would I Buy Again:Yes
Learning Curve:Low
Who Is It For:Anyone wanting to capture documents, such as a handwriter
What I Like:Correction of perspective distortion. Easy UI
What I Don't Like:Auto-detection of corners doesn't work most of the time
Final Statement:DocScan lets you do exactly what its name says, and then some
It can fast auto-detect document edges from a picture, correct perspective distortion, remove shadows and brighten it up to produce a clear and sharp document, especially useful in a Low-Light environment.
In addition, DocScan has a built-in PDF viewer for previewing scanned documents and browsing pages in detail. You can easily swipe over a page to delete it or press Edit button to reorder pages in list. Each PDF file can be accessed directly from iTunes or you can email out as a PDF or zipped JPEG file.
Besides email, DocScan supports various ways to export documents:
1. Export documents to iBooks (prerequisite: iBooks intsalled).
2. Export documents / pages to Dropbox (prerequisite: Dropbox intsalled).
3. Export documents / pages to Evernote (prerequisite: Evernote intsalled).
4. Export documents / pages to Google Docs.
5. Export pages to Photo Albums.
6. Print documents via AirPrint.
7. No Ads.
More features:
1. Option to adjust W/H aspect ratio.
2. Option to rotate by 90, 180, 270 degrees.
3. Allow to manually adjust document edges to cross picture boundary when a document is not entirely within the photo.
4. Multi-touches to zoom in / out photos and scanned documents easily.
Tips:
1. For best edge detection, please place your documents in high contrast to the background
2. If your iPhone model is 3G or earlier, you must hold it at least 10-12 inches away from the document to avoid out-of-focus scans.
3. Works best on iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 or later new models. For older iPhone models you may need additional gadgets, such as Griffin Clarifi case with macro lens to improve the quality of close-up pictures.
4. On iPad and iPod Touch, DocScan can be used to correct perspective distortion and brighten up documents from images saved in Photo Albums.
